Had the Venge out on Saturday and it’s bedazzled with EE Brakes. Learned, as I plummeted down Novelty Hill, that you need to pull them to brake and then pull them some MORE, THEN MORE.

They work well and I like a good modulating brake, but I just hadn’t pushed the bike to the limits yet on a descent that steep. The back side of Novelty into Carnation is as steep as traffic engineers will allow.

Next time will brake earlier and harder. As a roleur, I can descend. So I dropped down Novelty, like I always do chasing the skinny-fawk climbers and

Oh! forgot I had super-lightweight, crazy-machined brakes on this bike … oh, ooh wait, ok, now under control, whoa!

On a longer descent, there would’ve been more time to adjust, shift my weight, and sit up straight to scrub speed with my chest. The brakes didn’t let me down, I just didn’t have time to grab more of them before that first turn and the suicide intersection at the bottom. As new new brit friend said in a thick accent

Smelled your brakes down the whole hill. A very distinctive smell.

After Cross season and riding in Maui, it took a while for my muscle memory to remember the road yesterday with fast pace lines and tempo climbing, but once they did, it was all good.

Yum!

Strava gave the route and effort a suffer score of 100. Don’t know what that means, other than, I was thinking about Taco Time’s new sweet potato Mexi-Fries around mile 50.